CNN host John Berman accused the White House on Friday of pushing “racist theater” on immigration to scare Americans to the polls ahead of next week’s midterm elections.
Referring to the controversy surrounding an ad released President Trump containing footage of Luis Bracamontes, a deported Mexican immigrant who returned to the states and killed two police officers in 2014, Berman said that the Trump administration was “using all the levers of power” to “rile up voters.”
{mosads}”The White House is producing theater, theater designed to provoke fear,” Berman said at the top of “New Day” on Friday. “Some of it is racist theater.”
“Some of it is dishonest theater. Some of it is both,” he continued. “But it’s theater designed to get votes. The president is using all the levers of power, including the Roosevelt Room, including the military, to rile up voters with four days to go until the midterms.”
The media criticism is some of the harshest yet aimed at the White House over the ad and Trump’s rhetoric on immigration. Democrats and some Republicans have faulted Trump over the advertisement he released on his 55-million-follower Twitter account this week.
The video, which shows Bracamontes bragging about the officers’ murders in court, was called “sickening” by Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake (R), a frequent critic of Trump’s, and a “dog-whistle” by Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.
Trump has sought to blame Democrats for crimes caused by undocumented immigrants as Republicans focus their messaging on immigration in a last push for votes ahead of Tuesday’s elections.
Bracamontes, however, returned to the U.S. during the Bush administration, not under Democratic control of government as the ad implies.
The president has battled CNN for months over coverage of his administration, frequently attacking the network as “fake news.” CNN president Jeff Zucker responded last week after a pipe bomb was mailed to the company’s newsroom, accusing the president of not understanding that “their words matter.”
“There is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media,” Zucker said in a statement.